A. Field of the Invention
The field of the present invention relates generally to portable apparatuses used for grilling or barbequing food over a fire or other source of heat. More particularly, the present invention relates to such apparatuses that are configured to be collapsible and foldable for ease of portability and storage. Even more particularly, the present invention relates to such apparatuses that are adjustable in length and height for use over different sizes of heat sources or variable placement of the grill surface relative to the heat source.
B. Background
Many people enjoy cooking various types of food on a grilling surface over an open fire, charcoal or other sources of heat. As is well known, this type of cooking is commonly referred to as grilling or barbequing. The grilling surface typically comprises a plurality of interconnected, spaced apart and generally parallel transverse rods or bars that form a grate on which the food is cooked. Alternatively, the grilling surface may comprise a ribbed surface or a generally flat, griddle-type of surface. Many home, restaurant and other cooking locations grill the food to obtain certain flavor and health benefits that are well known to be associated with grilling food. At home, many people utilize outdoor barbeque grills, with the heat supplied by gas, charcoal, wood or other fuel, to cook their food. While grilling of food is popular both at and away from the home, outdoor enthusiasts such as hunters, campers, hikers, recreational vehicle users and the like particularly tend to utilize and enjoy grilling their food. Although some of this popularity has to do with the lack of a non-grilling cooking device, such as an oven or stove, that is suitable or efficient for cooking food outdoors, much of the popularity of grilling has to do with the availability of fuel (such as wood), the taste of grilled foods, the avoidance of inside cooking odors and the overall enjoyment of the outdoor experience. For this reason, even those outdoor enthusiasts who do have ovens or stoves readily available, such as recreational vehicle users and many camper units, often prefer to grill their food over an open fire-type of heat source outside the recreational vehicle or other camp vehicle.
With regard to grilling of food at outdoor camping locations, many such locations have a fire pit or the like provided for the outdoor enthusiast to use to grill food. In many areas of the country, if the person staying at the area desires to grill his or her food, use of the provided fire pit is mandatory, as opposed to making their own fire pit, for aesthetic and fire safety reasons. Fire pits commonly have side walls formed from one or more different types of materials, including steel rings, rocks, concrete, bricks and other materials, that are suitable for substantially enclosing the cooking fire therein. Often, the material for the fire pit side walls is selected from materials that are commonly available or otherwise associated with the particular location. Although the typical fire pit is generally circular in shape, fire pits are known to come in other shapes, including square, rectangular and various multi-faceted shapes. Depending on the area where the fire pit is located or on the personal preferences of the fire pit builder, the height of the fire pit side walls may vary somewhat from one location to another, or even from one campground to other campgrounds in the same area. Some fire pits may be built substantially into the ground, while others may have side walls that stand twelve, eighteen, twenty-four inches, or even more, above the ground.
Unless the food is to be cooked over the fire or other heat source utilizing a skewer, such as one would do with hot dogs or marshmallows, the typical user of the fire pit places a grilling surface on the fire pit walls or other supporting structure such that the grilling surface is substantially over the fire for cooking his or her food. Some fire pits have grilling surfaces available for the user to use with the fire pit. In fact, some of these provided grilling surfaces are hingedly connected to the fire pit wall such that they can be folded over the fire to provide a secure surface for grilling the food. For a variety of taste, health and sanitary reasons, however, many outdoor enthusiasts do not utilize the provided grilling surface and instead choose to utilize their own grilling surface for cooking. The problem the outdoor enthusiast faces with providing his or her own grilling surface is at least two-fold, namely being able to store the grilling surface when it is not in use and having a properly sized grilling surface for the fire pit or other cooking area. Because it is very difficult to guess or know in advance the size of grilling surface that can be utilized with a particular fire pit or other cooking area, the outdoor enthusiast either must bring more than one grilling surface to accommodate different size fire pits, modify the fire pit to fit his or her grilling surface or otherwise make the grilling surface and fire pit cooperate to provide a secure grilling surface (i.e., one that will not fall into the fire with the food on it). Bringing multiple sizes of grilling surfaces is not usually a practical solution and many fire pits cannot be easily modified, such as by moving the fire pit side walls, to securely support the grilling surface. Even when the grilling surface can be supported by the fire pit side walls or other supporting structures, use of the side walls or support structure fixes the height of the grilling surface relative to the fire or other heat source. Many persons consider this to be a major disadvantage to use of fire pits because it does not provide the user with any flexibility with regard to how close he or she can place the grilling surface, and therefore the food cooking on the grilling surface, to the heat from the heat source. As well known to most persons, this flexibility is desired so that the user may control how fast or slow the food will cook and to what extent the heat source is able to sear or not sear the cooking food.
One alternative the outdoor enthusiast has to using a provided fire pit and his or her own grilling surface is to utilize a barbeque unit, which usually has a “built-in” grilling surface and is similar in configuration to the typical home unit, that can be brought to the cooking location by the camping vehicle, recreational vehicle or other vehicle. Unfortunately, use of the home-type of barbeque units is generally not very practical due to the size of such units and the storage space available to the outdoor enthusiast for carrying the necessary materials and equipment to the camping location. In addition, many such units can be difficult to load and unload from the vehicle due to their size, weight and/or shape. As such, the typical outdoor enthusiast does not utilize these types of barbeque units for his or her grilling purposes.
Portable grills suitable for use over a fire or other heat source, with or without a built-in or established fire pit, are well known in the prior art. In fact, a number of patents have issued for such devices. Representative of such portable grills is U.S. Pat. No. 6,131,560 to Healy, which discloses a portable grill having telescoping legs that extend for use of the grill over an open fire or other heat source and which fold to allow the grill to be easily transported in a case or other carrying unit. U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,706 to Meza and U.S. Pat. No. 4,977,824 to Shinler disclose roll-up cooking grills that are suitable for providing a flat surface over a heat source and then being rolled into a bundle for storage and transport. U.S. Pat. No. 4,589,399 to Hamill, U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,528 to Kuchenbrod, U.S. Pat. No. 1,309,049 to Syrett and U.S. Pat. No. 718,714 to Larson are examples of cooking grills that have foldable grilling surfaces that are supported above the fire for cooking and which are folded to provide a more compact unit for storage and transport. U.S. Pat. No. 6,279,467 to Tiemann, U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,523 to Stohrer and U.S. Pat. No. 4,178,844 to Ward are examples of cooking grids, racks or grates that are configured to allow the unit to expand in one or more directions. U.S. Pat. No. 6,681,759 to Bentulan discloses a home-type of barbeque grill apparatus that is configured to expand and contract so as to increase or decrease the cooking surface area. U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,950 to Johnson is an example of a camp stove or grill that has legs which fold relative to the grilling surface for storage and transport. U.S. Pat. No. 6,546,851 to Osborne describes a portable cooking grill that is configured to be substantially disassembled for storage and transport.
While the prior art teaches a variety of features and configurations for portable cooking grills, none of the known references teach or suggest the unique structural features of the portable cooking grill of the present invention. Specifically, the prior does not teach, whether taken singularly or in combination, a portable cooking grill that is configured for use over a fire or other heat source that is sufficiently versatile for use with a variety of different sized fire pits or other cooking areas and which is easily collapsed for storage and transport. What is needed, therefore, is a portable cooking grill that provides a substantially flat grilling surface above a fire or other heat source that is adjustable in length to accommodate different sized fire pits or cooking areas, adjustable in height to allow the user to adjust for how close he or she wants or needs the food to be to the fire and substantially collapsible for ease of storage and transport. A preferred portable cooking grill will include a frame system that is configured to support one or more grilling surfaces, extend as necessary for different sizes of fire pits and fold for storage. The preferred portable cooking grill will also comprise telescoping legs to allow the user to adjust the height of the cooking surface relative to the fire or other heat source over which the food will be grilled. The preferred portable cooking grill will be easy for the typical user to set-up for cooking and collapse for storage/transport. The preferred portable cooking grill will also be adaptable for using replaceable grilling inserts to provide different types of grilling surfaces such that the user can choose the type of grilling surface he or she believes to be the most beneficial for the type of food to be cooked (i.e., hamburgers or steak versus pancakes or eggs).